When trying to create a Dairy-Free Copycat Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, I looked at many, many copycat recipes online. Most of them use water-based pumpkin syrup as an ingredient, with very little pumpkin in the syrup itself. Starbucks lists a condensed milk-based pumpkin spice sauce in the ingredients for its pumpkin spice latte. I followed their lead and created a coconut-milk based dairy-free pumpkin spice sauce to use in dairy-free pumpkin spice lattes.
Starbucks also uses annatto in their Pumpkin Spice Sauce to make it a pretty orange color. I added a bit of turmeric to my sauce to brighten the color instead. The end result uses an entire 15-ounce can of pumpkin puree and tastes like eggless pumpkin pie filling.
This Pumpkin Spice Sauce has a lot of fun uses beyond Pumpkin Spice Lattes. You can also enjoy it in dairy-free pumpkin spice steamers, or on pancakes, waffles, or ice cream.
Special Diet Notes: Dairy-Free Pumpkin Spice Sauce
By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, gluten-free, nut-free, peanut-free, soy-free, vegan, vegetarian, and top food allergy-friendly.
- 1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin puree
- 1 cup full-fat coconut milk
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- ½ tablespoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon ground ginger
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Put the pumpkin, coconut milk, sugars, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, salt, and nutmeg in a medium saucepan, and whisk until smooth.
- Place the pan over low heat and simmer the mixture for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Strain the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer to ensure it is completely smooth.
- Store your dairy-free pumpkin spice sauce in an airtight container (I use a canning jar) for up to 1 week.
Key Pantry Supplies: Dairy-Free Pumpkin Spice Sauce
For More Dairy-Free Comfort Food, Get Go Dairy Free!
9 Comments
I have made this several times now and love it. I put it in my chai tea every day. I have made little changes along the way. I use all my pumpkin pie spices and the turmeric. I also use a whole can of coconut milk. Today I was out of coconut milk so I used cream of coconut. It work well. Gave a nice thick, rich sauce. Thank you for the recipe
Hi Mary, so glad you are enjoying it! Recipes are even better when you can make them your own!
I work at starbucks. I just cant get it to taste like theirs.
is the tumeric just for colour or does it add flavour?! don’t want to buy a bag of it just to use a little bit once….
Hi, Ashley, The turmeric adds a little bit of flavor as well as color, but of course you can leave it out if you’d like! If you do decide to buy some, Alisa wrote about the benefits of turmeric–and shared a turmeric smoothie recipe–here: https://www.godairyfree.org/recipes/turmeric-smoothie
Interesting recipe. I had 2 questions. After making the sauce could I put it in an ice cube tray and freeze the sauce which could keep for the whole year? I’d have to pre measure the sauce on order to use the correct amount when removing from the freezer. Also could I use coconut milk drink as a more healthy substitute?
Hi Daniel, Thanks for your questions! I haven’t tried either of these options. I wouldn’t keep any sauce you freeze for up to a year, but for a couple of months should be all right if you decided to try to freeze it. I don’t know if the sauce would separate if frozen and then thawed.
As for using a substitute for the canned coconut milk, that would affect the consistency of the sauce. Since you are using only 1-2 tablespoons of the sauce per drink, I don’t know if making that substitution would be worthwhile.
I am presently making this sauce, revised. I used mace, cinnamon, salt, ginger, turmeric. I don’t use traditional sugars so I used 3 TBSP of coconut sugar and 1 TBSP of Pure Maple Syrup. It tastes delicious already…have 10 mins to go on the stovetop.
That sounds wonderful! Thank you for sharing your modifications KJ and I’m glad it’s working out so well!